10m is in good shape. FT8 signals are booming in. QSOs from Australia till Bolivia. Yet, calling SSB resulted in just one QSO with YC2DBW from Indonesia. Calling CQ on SSB has no use at all. Tried several times for about 10 minutes without response. Compared to calling CQ with FT8 resulting in several QSOs in the same time. I tried 6m and 4m today. I have been heard in Europe but only a few stations. I hope the ES season will really start one of these days.
Click start it is obvious how to handle.
Output KML file can be saved on your computer and can be imported in google earth
Menu > projects > (Make a new project) open > Import KML file from computer
Haven't got much time for the radio hobby at the moment. But today had a few hours planned to do some antenna work. I wanted to dismantle the vertical experiment to make place for something else I have in mind. Besides that I had to mount the 6m/4m duoband beam into the tower to get ready for the ES season.
 |
| Work in progress... |
I was curious how the 1:1 balun would look after a winter. The balun was mounted above the autotuner in the small white box.
I was surprised to see that inside it looked like new. Nothing wrong at all. So I can use it for another experimental project.
The autotuner needs a power supply of 12V which I provide with a PSU in the garage throught a thin twin wire up into the tower. It is connected with some "chocolate bloc" connectors. Although I made it watertight with vulcanizing tape it really is not corrosion resistant. It really is a miracle the autotuner still did work at all. Another one, just as corroded is in the coax connection box at the bottom of my tower. I really need to find something better to connect the tuner to 12V without having to worry about corrosion.
Next I collected the components for the 6m/4m duoband beam which are all in reasonable good shape. Assembling took me about 30 minutes. That was including polishing the alu rods as good as possible.
 |
| The result... |
